Ever since Full Tilt Poker’s re-launch back in November, there has been a quartet of online poker rooms at the top of the cash game traffic rankings: PokerStars, Full Tilt, PartyPoker, and the iPoker Network (WinnerPoker). Full Tilt immediately inserted itself into the #2 spot behind PokerStars, while Party and iPoker likely lamented its return, finding themselves pushed back a rung.

That’s how it looked like it would be for a very long time. This past week, however, things changed, as PokerScout now reports that Full Tilt Poker has dropped to fourth in the cash game rankings, the first time it has not been immediately behind PokerStars since it returned from the dead. PokerScout ranks in terms of real money ring game traffic.

According to PokerScout, Full Tilt Poker now has a seven-day average of 3,050 cash game players, compared to PartyPoker’s 3,300 and iPoker’s 3,200. Barring some industry-changing development, none of them will catch PokerStars any time soon, as the world’s largest online poker room has a seven-day average of 23,600 cash game players.

Full Tilt’s numbers have been in decline for the last couple of months, with peak traffic sitting in the 8,000s and 7,000s at the beginning of February, then dropping into the 6,000s most of the rest of the month. For the first two weeks of March, most days saw numbers in the 5,000s, then dropping into the 4,000s late last week.

The most recent drop may be deceiving, though. Full Tilt Poker launched two new games – Five Card Stud and Irish Poker – last week and PokerScout did not start tracking them immediately. The games have started to be tracked and it looks like they are being reflected in the numbers: peak traffic was up to 5,542 yesterday after four days in a row below 5,000. While Five Card Stud hasn’t garnered much interest yet, Irish Poker certainly has; PokerScout reports that Irish Poker games comprise more than 3% of Full Tilt’s cash game traffic.

As such, PokerScout expects Full Tilt Poker to leapfrog the iPoker Network soon as the figures from the new games catch up, but it will still take some doing to retake second place from PartyPoker. Whether that will actually happen remains to be seen.

In the last two months, iPoker’s peak daily traffic has wavered, but with just a few exceptions, has stayed in the 5,000s. Despite adding a few rooms to the network recently, there hasn’t been much of a visible uptick in traffic. The most recent addition was Dusk Till Dawn Poker, the online counterpart of the popular U.K. poker club. Betfairalso made the switch to iPoker in January and Ladbrokesplans to do the same.

PartyPoker’s peak numbers have actually been on the decline over the last couple of months, although they have come back up in the last day or so. Party’s recent drop may be attributed to the discovery (and partial admission) that the site has been preventing winning players from playing on certain attractive tables in order to give beginners or losing players a better chance to play with lesser skilled players. The change was not well received by the poker community, possibly resulting in regulars migrating to other poker rooms.

All told, PokerScout reported that online poker cash game traffic dipped 4% last week, the result of major promotions at some sites coming to an end. Industry traffic is down 7% from the same time a year ago, and remember that was without Full Tilt Poker.

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